


Keep Talking and Everybody Breaks-Up

by ApprenticedMagician



Series: Twinyards Appreciation Week [4]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Banter, Gen, Involving Video Games, Multi, Neil is bitter and jealous but it's funny, Team Bonding, With all the Foxes!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 01:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12716793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticedMagician/pseuds/ApprenticedMagician
Summary: "Challenging puzzles that will test the limits of your communication skills… and friendships?A different bomb every time! Procedurally generated puzzles keep the action fresh.Local multiplayer party game – A great way to experience VR with all of your friends at the same time!"The Foxes should have known from the start that cooperative board games were the wrong type of bonding experience.





	Keep Talking and Everybody Breaks-Up

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaannnd for day 7, which had to feature both twins, I wrote a piece inspired by Youtube let's-play videos for the game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes - which are hilarious - and partly inspired too by the idea of twin telepathy, or a kind of language where siblings or long-time friends can easily understand what the other means even when nonsense falls out of their mouth.

Everyone on the team thought Betsy was on the downturn of her career (and the soundness of her mind) when her suggestion for building trust and polishing teamwork was playing cooperative board games. **  
**

This conclusion was mostly founded on the fact that, when the team followed her direction and spent an evening at a board game cafe, everything ended in disaster. Allison still refused to talk to Renee and would outright punch Kevin in the throat every time he got close enough; Dan and Matt had broken up for five straight days;  _Nicky_  had almost stabbed  _Andrew_  with his own knife.

It was safe to say that trust and teamwork had all but been demolished.

Except, that is, between Aaron and Andrew.

Not only had they successfully mind-melded at the cafe and run strategic circles around everyone, they actively sought out opportunities to rub it in everyone’s faces. A few days later, the Monsters’ dorm room housed a copy of the cooperative Virtual Reality game, “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” and each Fox was challenged to beat Aaron and Andrew’s times.

Not that they made that easy. Or, you know,  _possible_.

Allison had stormed out of the dorm as soon as she saw Kevin in the room, ranting all the way, “ _ **You had one fucking job, Day!!**_ ”

Kevin had taken one look at the bomb defusal manual that came with the game before gracelessly leaving to make a vodka run. He still hadn’t come back.

Dan and Renee called it quits and left for margaritas after successfully defusing their bomb once, though it had taken them three tries to do it.

Matt and Nicky had been doing well, but then they reached the one-minute countdown and Nicky had panicked. He began cutting and pressing and trying all sorts of things without waiting for Matt’s instruction and blew everything up when he made one too many mistakes. Both backliners had stuck around, if only so that Neil wouldn’t be left to bear the gloating alone.

Neil hadn’t moved once from his sullen position on the couch, arms crossed, knees up, and still murderously angry from the fuckup of an attempt he and Andrew had tried earlier that morning - it wasn’t his fault he struggled to understand what Andrew meant when Neil couldn’t see his face!

“Hieroglyphs,” Andrew intoned, looking ridiculous as hell with the VR headset covering his eyes. The fact he was reclined in his regular beanbag didn’t hide the fact that his shoulders were tense and his grip on the game controller was fierce. He was more serious about this game than he had been about his sober game nights in Neil’s first year, a fact that made Neil fall deeper into his sulk.

“Describe,” Aaron commanded, sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back to the tv and his eyes focussed on the bomb defusal manual in his hands, flipping rapidly and efficiently through his pages.

“Nicky’s dumbass face,” “-Hey!” “the alien from Alien, a lambda, and your ballsack.”

“Gay,” Aaron said, kicking Andrew’s leg without looking up. While it would normally please Neil to witness the twins’ weird, stupid rough-housing-that-passed-for-affection, today he sneered his worst Butcher’s glare at it and stole some of Nicky’s popcorn (“ _-Heyyy!!_ ”). He wasn’t sure why he was even sticking around, since Andrew had all but banished him from ever playing the game with him again.

‘ _As though everyone but me knows what the fuck a lambda is. Fucking Andrew. Matt would at least use words I understand._ ’ At this rate, he and Andrew might also break up. Temporarily.

Probably temporarily.

Spiteful, Neil threw a couple popcorn pieces at Aaron.

Aaron first ignored Neil’s pettiness and then insulted it by eating the popcorn he had tossed. Andrew’s blind attempt to retaliate his brother’s earlier assault was also ignored while he simply instructed, “Nicky, lambda, Alien, ballsack. Now go back and hold your button.”

“…Red. One?”

“One.”

“Simon says green.”

“Fuck him, then,” Neil plotted Aaron’s murder a little when he saw Andrew’s lips twitch upwards and stole some more popcorn to make himself feel better. (“Neil, seriously, I can make you your own bowl.”) Matt, beside him, patted his knee a bit in consolation.

“Green-green, after yellow,” Andrew reported, having gone ahead of the manual’s instructions thanks to his eidetic memory.

“Do it yourself if you’re so smart,” Aaron challenged, completely meaning it but also completely confident that his instruction wasn’t needed. Andrew’s next smile showed teeth as he fiddled with the controls.

“So when Betsy recommended cooperative games,” Nicky said to Neil, eyes nervously watching the ever-visible countdown on the virtual bomb, “do you think she meant to improve the team’s teamwork or just the twins?”

Neil’s mind went blank as he turned over this idea he had never considered before. It was true that Betsy didn’t commonly offer suggestions to the team as a whole. Aaron and Andrew’s relationship was improving all the time but they still met with her every Wednesday.

… Had Aaron and Andrew dragged the team into chaos for their own amusement…?

“Nah,” said Matt, engrossed in watching the twins work their magic but also reading Neil’s mind. (See?! A much better chance of success was to be had if Neil partnered with Matt. Andrew was the problem here, not Neil.) “No way. Minyards aren’t the bragging type.”

“What’s your word?” Aaron asked, cutting through the conversation.

“‘Their’.”

“As in, ‘they’re stupid’?”

Nicky, Neil and Matt all immediately stiffened and threw shifting glances to each other.

Andrew let out a noise that could be mistaken for a laugh. “As in, ‘their loss’.”

Yeah, Neil and Andrew were  _definitely_  breaking up over this. Maybe Matt would even break up with Dan anew once Neil became single again.

See whose loss it is then. Fucking Minyards.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Watch Dan Howell and Phil Lester struggle through the same game, if you want. Link!


End file.
